ICE Apprehensions Half Levels of Five Years Ago

While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) administrative arrests are up as compared to
the last two years of the Obama Administration, these "interior" apprehensions are only half the
levels of five years ago when Secure Communities held sway under President Obama. Available
arrest-by-arrest records indicate that ICE arrests under President Trump—after an initial
jump—also appear to have stabilized and are no longer increasing. See Figure 1.

As TRAC reported earlier[1], these trends on ICE apprehensions are similar to trends for other ICE
immigration enforcement actions including its use of detainers, deportations under Secure
Communities, as well as overall ICE deportations. Each remain well below the levels that
prevailed during most of the Obama years.

Focusing just on monthly ICE arrests since President Trump assumed office, ICE arrests have
averaged 13,318 per month during February - September 2017. This does represent a significant
increase over the period between FY 2015 and FY 2016 when the Obama Administration
replaced Secure Communities with the more narrowly focused Priority Enforcement Program.

However, ICE arrests are currently still way below those during the Secure Communities era
under President Obama. Then ICE monthly arrests averaged 25,473 during the FY 2008 - FY
2012 period, and remained higher than current levels under President Trump throughout FY
2013 - FY 2014 even after ICE apprehension numbers began to drop. See Tables 1a and 1b.

Table 1. ICE Administrative Arrests by Fiscal Year and Month

Table 1a

Fiscal Year

Ave per Month

FY 2008

24,068

FY 2009

25,993

FY 2010

26,243

FY 2011

26,841

FY 2012

24,219

FY 2013

19,142

FY 2014

15,143

FY 2015

9,990

FY 2016

9,216

FY 2017:

Obama*

9,247

Trump*

13,318

Table 1b

FY 2017 only

# per Month

2016OCT

9,397

2016NOV

9,016

2016DEC

8,998

2017JAN

9,576

2017FEB

11,554

2017MAR

14,085

2017APR

12,372

2017MAY

13,531

2017JUN

13,975

2017JUL

13,572

2017AUG

14,376

2017SEP

13,078

* Obama (Oct 2016-Jan 2017); Trump (Feb - Sep 2017).

Examining How ICE Arrests Take Place

Recently obtained internal ICE arrest-by-arrest records allow a detailed look at how these ICE
arrests take place. In more than seven out of every ten ICE apprehensions, ICE assumed custody
of individuals held by another law enforcement agency[2]. In this report these are referred to as
"custodial" arrests. The remainder of the arrests usually take place somewhere in the wider
community. These occur, for example, when ICE arrests someone from their home, workplace,
business, courthouse, or some other location in the wider community[3].

These data obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC)
at Syracuse University reveal that the number of ICE "custodial arrests" are little changed from
levels in October 2014 at the end of the Secure Communities era under President Obama[4].
Despite this administration's concerted efforts to push for greater assistance by state and local
law enforcement agencies, as yet these efforts appear to have had little impact on the number of
individuals ICE takes into custody from other law enforcement agencies.

As shown in Table 2, this is true for each of ICE's various programs that pick up immigrants
from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, as well as for arrests through its 287(g)
program where ICE officers are stationed in local jails. Overall, ICE monthly custodial arrests
since President Trump assumed office are actually down slightly since October 2014 during the
last month of Secure Communities under President Obama.

Community arrests, in contrast, are up. They rose from 2,893 in October 2014 to 3,360 in
September 2017. See Table 3.

* Uses ICE operational definition for community arrests found in its
FY 2017 ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Report. All other arrests are labeled for simplicity as custodial arrests although a small number come from a variety of other sources other than CAP and 287(g) programs.** Only covers last month of Secure Communities (Oct 2014); earlier data presently unavailable.

The Daily Pattern of ICE Custodial vs. Community Arrests

These arrest-by-arrest data allow a day-by-day comparison of ICE community versus custodial
arrests. Figure 2 shows the pattern revealed for the three-year period covering FY 2015 - FY
2017. The weekly work cycle shows up as regular sharp valleys in the plots reflecting the
greatly reduced number of apprehensions that take place over weekends as compared with
weekdays. Similarly the holiday season each year around Christmas also shows a reduction in
both custodial and community arrests[5].

The more restrictive targeting when the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) was implemented
is evident. The weekly work cycle shows a reduction in custodial arrests that occurred when
Secure Communities was abolished in November 2014. The drop is only apparent for custodial
arrests. Community arrests, in contrast, continued at much the same level for the rest of President
Obama's term.

After President Trump assumed office at the end of January 2017, the plot shows that custodial
arrests immediately rose after the more restrictive priorities of PEP were abolished. The
weekday arrest numbers returned to approximately the same level present during October 2014 -
the last month of Secure Communities under President Obama.

After Trump assumed office, the number of community arrests also rose - this time to levels
higher than during the Obama years when apprehension numbers had been fairly flat. However,
through the end of FY 2017 under Trump there is little indication of large targeted raids or other
special initiatives that might be expected to show up as usually sharp jumps in the daily arrest
patterns[6]. The increase in community arrests appears more likely to largely reflect the change in
ICE policy concerning so-called collateral encounters. New ICE policies now call for arresting
anyone its agents happen to encounter in the community while searching for other individuals
that were their targets.

[2]
Many of these apprehensions occurred when ICE took individuals into custody from the prison or jail facility
where they had been serving their sentence for a criminal conviction. Still others were transferred to ICE custody
after they were picked up and fingerprinted by local law enforcement agencies on a non-immigration matter. This
was coordinated through ICE's Criminal Alien Program (CAP). A few locales participate in ICE's 287(g) program
where ICE agents are stationed within local jails.

[3]
Numbers in this report use ICE's operational definition for community arrests found in its
FY 2017 ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Report. All other arrests are
labeled for simplicity as custodial arrests although a small number come from a range of other sources
other than CAP and 287(g) programs.

[4]
These newly released internal records cover October 2014 through September 2017. Data for earlier time
periods have not yet been released by ICE.

[5]
See TRAC's earlier February 2017 report covering the arrest of individuals with outstanding removal orders for a further discussion of some of these daily patterns during the Obama years.